DO. NOT. STOP. FIGHTING.
Heroes, Villains, Vigilantes and Rogues alike. It is beyond our petty differences and moral entanglements that we must strive to reach, for our very existence has been called into question. We face extinction by the callus hand of NCSoft's bean counters. They do not see us for the unique cultured family we represent. They haven't experienced the love and support that immeasurably binds us beyond the bounds of Cyberspace. They see only profits and loss, numbers on a ticker.
Blinded to the sterile statistics of a ledger and a ticker, we must open their eyes. We must show them how much of a mistake it will be to destroy us. We must continue with our petitions, our write ins through snail mail, our phone calls to their offices. We must gather those who can believe in the human spirit, whether they have ever set foot in Paragon or the Rogue Isles, and show our love for our City.
I love City of Heroes with everything that I am. This game saved my life. You see, I wasn't planning on sticking around. Life was underwater and I was losing my ability to float. I had been through several betrayals, bad decisions on my part, witnessed the darkest side of humanity, and was ready to give up on everyone around me. That's when a dear friend of mine showed me a place where I could fight my demons.
Shadow Ravenwolf first set foot in Atlas Park and I was awestruck. I have been playing video games since 1982. I have played good guys, bad guys, machines and a hungry yellow orb who wasn't so terrified of blue-blinking ghosts on his track to get some fruit. Video games were something that I would play, put down, pause, live life and come back as I wanted to. They had no specific hold on me or goal and lessons to teach me. Professor CoH was about to hold classes and I was to be strapped down to my desk. The world I experienced was nothing like i had ever encountered. It was a living landscape, full of life, people, stories, and adventures. It was full of the very demons that had convinced me it was time to leave it all behind. It was also full of people who would restore my faith in humanity, give me the strength to see I was better than my demons, the support to learn to fight back, the self esteem to see I could accomplish my goals, and had the patience to bear with a social outcast who was gnashing his teeth and lashing out at anything that moved.
Gnashing and lashing out gave way to learning power sets and using those powers to defeat enemies within the game. I started to meet more and more people. I learned so much from them about the game, life, and myself. My lack of knowledge brought me to the community forums. I spent long hours reading and researching the game mechanics, trick like binds and macros, and got involved in the community. As I gained experience, I did what I could to pass on what I knew to the new people coming in the door. I tried to do my best to give back. It was not expected or required that I do so. I did it because it was the right thing to do.
"The right thing to do" imparts a sense of justice and direction with life. I decided to go back to college in my 30s and finish what I had started back in the early 90s. I had fallen through the cracks of life and would need to find a different way to get back to where I was. The people I met in game were supportive and extremely helpful in my pursuit to turn my life around. I enrolled in classes and balanced life, CoH, school, and family obligations. After getting several of teh remedial classes out of teh way, I had to decide what direction I wanted to take my academic career in. I let CoH, my sense of justice and life's direction guide me.
It is that sense of direction that compelled me to try to build a program that would index, catagorize, and add an efficiency to the crafting process that Issue 9 brought with the Invention System. Without a program to help organize salvages and recipes, I was having to write out the name of a recipe and what salvages it required. Then, I would have to gather those salvages in the market and from my character's storage. This wasn't so bad when you had a short "shopping list" of pieces. However, once you had several recipes with overlapping salvages that you needed, it became a chore. Frustrated by my computer illiteracy and the gaping chasm of where I was versus where I needed to be to accomplish this goal, I set out to take computer programming classes.
Programming classes led to database management. Before CoH, I had a small community built through my website. I would later expand the forums to include all of my friends from CoH, The Wolf Pack Elite and Cataclysmic Evolution (our hero and villain supergroups) and become a beacon in Cyberspace for fellow travelers. The site was not without issues and database issues caused problems that my meager education couldn't compensate for. I continued with web development and tried to learn everyting I could to make Ravenwolf Manor a place to support my CoH family. Computer failure led me to taking classes, working in the college's PC Repair Shop, and becoming an A+ Certified PC Specialist through CompTIA. While Facebook killed the smaller independent forum communities like I had in the Manor, CoH continued to inspire my continued educational goals. I never quite learned enough to reach my goals of making the Invention System more automated and efficient, but I continue with my education while repairing computers on teh side to supplement my work income and pay my VIP Sub fees.
Everything in life has a cost, even life itself. Shadow Ravenwolf's in game Grandfather was Doc Ravenwolf. He was always my analog for my real life Grandfather. The realtionship between the two characters emphasized my deep love for the man my Grandfather was. In late November of 2007, my Grandfather fell ill. I was able to see him one last time on Thanksgiving Day. I told him "Later" because I truly believe that we are all interconnected in this universe, and will see each other again. I was completely devastated by the loss of "Pocky", as we grandkids affectionately called him. Since Pocky's passing, I have always had a severely hard time logging into Doc. I had expressed my grief by building a memorial in that time period's incarnation of The Wolf Pack Elite's Supergroup Base. Around that time, several fellow players were experiencing their own losses. I dedicated the memorial to everyone who had lost someone they loved. Until the base faced a redesign, I would often allow players to come into the base, reminisce about them and we all grieved together. The community grieved with us and we all got through the hardest parts together. I say the hardest part as if it has passed. It had until the announcement I received a few days ago. While logged into Doc, going down memory lane, I saw the date that the servers would shut down and fell apart. November 30th has been cemented in my core as a date I do not wish to be a part of.
As I've bared my soul in this expression of my love for City of Heroes, I hope that I have inspired you. I want you to stand with me, fight these demons, and feel the love of this community as I have over the last 8 years. There are petitions to sign, letters to write, stamps to lick, and phone lines to jam up as we make our final assault on those who have condemned us to live on in faded memories. Go now. Go to the links I've provided. Do your part and give back to the city that gave you 8 years of life that you will never forget. I don't want to have to lay Doc to rest. It's not his time, it's not my time, it's not our time for rest. It's time to cinch up our boots, harness our powers, and let our capes fly!
Change.org Petition
This is the main petition we have launched to gain support and show our numbers.
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Titan Network - Save Paragon City!!
TonyV has taken the lead and organized a campaign headquarters for our efforts. The Save Paragon City!! Forum will guide you to all of the ways you can chip in and give back to the community.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?board=134.0
In closing, I hope to see everyone come together and fight for what is right. I know this grew to novel proportions and I appreciate your time. Save Paragon City!!
~Shadow Ravenwolf
Sometimes he changes into a costume that his adoptive parents found inside his space ship. When he uses the costume change screen, he changes his name to 'Superboy'.